The amount of information available over the Internet rapidly increases with the growth in the number of web sites and complexity of the content. However, the amount of information presented to the user during a single interactive session depends on the screen space available to render new content. With increase of available connection bandwidth, the screen space becomes the main limiting factor for the amount of the accessible content.
The amount of information presented during the same interactive session can be increased by augmenting the main document with supplemental content. This supplemental content may contain, for instance, help or hints describing a sequence of actions to achieve a desired result, the title of a link in the main document, links to documents or advertisements of the related products and services, etc. A common way to display such supplemental information when the available screen space is already occupied by the main document is to render the supplemental content in the area that overlaps the main browsing window. The supplemental content can be presented in a separate window with standard controls, in a rectangular panel (a link title or a tool tip) or in the area with a complex shape (balloon help or a free-form image used in the advertisement). Different presentation methods are developed to balance ease of access to the supplemental content (including actions required to display supplemental content and to interact with it) with ease of its removal when it is no longer needed.
A separate window with a “close” button, also known as a pop-up window, allows the user to interact with its content in the same fashion as with the main document. However, to close such a window, the user has to perform a set of additional operations (move the cursor to the “close” button of the pop-up window, click on the “close” button and move the cursor back to the area of interest in the main document). Pop-up windows are often annoying when they are opened without the user's request because they obscure the main document and the operations required to close each overlapping window interrupt the user's workflow. The use of popup windows is more acceptable if they are opened in response to the user action, such as a click on a cursor button when the “Alt” key is pressed. For instance, applications developed by Flycast™ Corporation and Atomica™ Corporation use such pop-up windows with links or dictionary definitions related to a selected word.
Other techniques allow a user to select which type of supplemental content associated with the main document should be displayed. In particular, “Smart Tags” used in the Office XP™ (RTM) product developed by Microsoft™ Corporation allow the user to choose the type of supplemental content for display by interacting with an interface element appearing near the current cursor position. Once a new pop-up window with the supplemental content is opened, a separate action is needed to close this pop-up window before resuming previous work, making the use of the supplemental content difficult and inconvenient for the user, and therefore decreasing the benefits of the provided service.
In order to make an interaction with the supplemental content more convenient, some prior art techniques display the supplemental content close to the cursor, decreasing the distance to the available interface elements. Other known solutions put controls of the multiple windows in a common area (e.g., a desktop bar at the edge of the screen), also speeding up navigation. However, removal of the supplemental content in all these cases still requires the user to move the cursor away from the current area of interest in the main document. To resume interaction with the main document, the cursor has to be moved back. Moving the cursor between the main and supplemental content is especially inconvenient if multiple instances of supplemental content are accessed for the same main document. In these cases, simplification of the content removal process becomes particularly important.
It is known in the prior art to trigger automatic removal of the supplemental content by the cursor motion during the regular navigation process. For instance, supplemental content known as a tool tip appears when cursor stops over the link or an interface element. Internet browsers, such as the Internet Explorer™ (RTM), developed by the Microsoft Corporation, remove each displayed tool tip from the screen when the cursor moves into the area of the tool tip or exits a screen region associated with a related link or an interface element. Due in large part to this easy removal method, tool tips are widely used both for the links inside the hypertext documents and for the elements of the application user interfaces. However, usefulness of tool tips is limited by the difficulty of interaction with their content since the cursor motion to the tool tip automatically removes the tool tip from the screen.
Some prior art solutions attempt to trigger removal of the supplemental content by easy-to-generate events other than a cursor motion. For instance, as described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,176, supplemental content can be removed if the user did not select such content during its display for a pre-defined time period. Other solutions include dosing the last window with the supplemental content when a new window appears, or performing a special gesture over the related element of the main document. However, in all these cases, the user has to spend some additional time and/or efforts before resuming work with the main document.
One solution that increases display choices for the content removable by a cursor motion is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,101. This solution allows the expansion of a tool tip (displayed after the cursor stops over an interface element) if the cursor is kept in the same area for a pre-defined time. However, the user cannot interact with the content within the tool tip (e.g., the user cannot scroll the internal text or select an embedded link). One other disadvantage of this method is that the user may keep the cursor in the same place for a purpose other than the increase of the obscured area of the main document.
Another set of problems arises when the user finds supplemental content presented in the pop-up window interesting enough to replace the main document. Pop-up windows are often displayed without control buttons such as “Back” and “Forward” or an address bar, in order to save space. Even when the user interface of the new window with supplemental content is sufficient, closing the old window with the main document causes loss of the browsing history for the current session: pressing the “Back” button in the new window does not recall the document from the closed window.
Lack of convenient ways to manage supplemental content decreases its benefits to the user, limiting the amount of information that can be accessed during each session.